Chameleon
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: Beautiful Pureblood, your secret will be exposed soon. — Astoria and the Mirror of Erised. Warnings for anorexia, self-harm, and slight bulimia.


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?  
**

Written for the HPFC Numerology Challenge "Zero"; Cinema Competition "The Outsiders"; 335 Pairing Challenge "Astoria Greengrass/Mirror of Erised"; The SAT/ACT Vocabulary Challenge "18. advocate"; Oh The Thinks You Can Think Competition "Sneeches"; Gemstone Competition "ruby"

Warning: anorexia, self-harm, slight bulimia

20 February 2014. Word Count: 1,123

**It still wasn't enough to satisfy her. It would never be enough.**

* * *

**Chameleon**

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"I was always an unusual girl. My mother told me I had a **chameleon** soul. No moral compass positioning due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean."

~ Lana del Ray, _Ride_ (opening monologue)

[-]

**_beautiful._**

Her parents carved her with cold careful hands and painted tears upon her face so that she became a weeping angel. She was _beautiful_, they would marvel, a flawless masterpiece. They placed her upon a pedestal and told her to stay that way for all of eternity. In answer to their demand, she placed her hands over her eyes and pretended that she lived in a timeless world where a girl counted ribs like one would count the twilight stars. Her parents advocated that being skinny was the only way to be pretty, and so she built herself a skeleton made of wishbones and hid her chameleon soul inside of that bony cage.

Astoria Greengrass, the angel who covered her eyes, was so beautiful that it _hurt_. Her beauty was her beast, and it was destroying her with every breath that she took.

**_Pureblood._**

Her heritage defined Astoria and ate away at her sanity. _Pureblood_. The two syllables were tainted by generations of aristocratic traditions. She was a beautiful fool, the best thing a girl could be, but it was only because society made her sew her lips closed into a grotesque stitched-up smile. She forced herself into believing that her parents only loved her when she was flawless and that wanting to be the prettiest Pureblooded girl was not a fault. However, the derogatory whispers hinting that she was the Greengrass's dirty little secret crumbled Astoria's backbone and her self-confidence. She locked herself in that unstable skeletal prison and strove for perfection. Astoria hungered for attention and starved herself of distractions as she obsessed over her quest on becoming the most beautiful girl ever. Days were carefully scrutinised in the same way as the calories on a nutrition label. Sweat oozed out of her pores as did the muscle and weight from her bones. Without the additional pounds, she felt free and invincible. She was now skinnier - prettier - but it still wasn't enough.

She scratched at her veins and wore a beaded bracelet of rubies around her wrist. The self-inflicted rosy red jewels etched upon her diamond skin tethered Astoria to reality and forced her to acknowledge pain. She might be a white marble statue of a girl frozen in time who was moulded precisely to her parents' wishes but the pure red ribbons snaking down her arms were freeing her from the imperial stone one scarlet drop at a time.

_**your**._

As a female Pureblood, she had no rights and nothing to claim as her own besides her dignity and pride. She was merely a puppet whose strings were controlled by her family and the corrupted society she was a part of. There was nothing about herself that she was proud of, anyway. She tried so hard to be the perfect daughter but Daphne - wonderful, stunning, intelligent Daphne - always claimed the crown.

She was a wisp of a girl who hid away in the Room of Requirement where her screams for help would go unheard. Her tired salt-speckled eyes were lifeless and dry, and as time crawled by, she became a jumbled mess of skin-and-bones that were knit together by a fraying cut thread.

**_secret._**

Once, Astoria wished for a mirror that would show her deepest desires. She didn't believe such a thing existed but the Room of Requirement did not disappoint. She stood in front of the enchanted glass and for the first time saw the person she wanted to be reflected back at her. The girl on the other side was lovely, vibrant, and full of life. The scars that tattooed the real Astoria's wrists and ankles had vanished in the reflection leaving the girl unblemished and flawless.

Astoria looked down at her weak, broken body and then back into the Mirror. She _had_ to be as beautiful as the girl trapped in the glass. And thus, the never-ending cycle of self-harm continued as Astoria's warped image of herself dominated her every thought. She counted calories in addition to stars and ribs; she purged herself of the food she did swallow; and she cleansed her pure blood of its imperfections through the methodical tracing of her blood vessels.

It still wasn't enough to satisfy her. It would never be enough.

**_will._**

Every now and then her mind would be jolted from its comatose state and she would stare in disbelieving horror at the damage she had inflicted upon herself. The physical scars twisting across her canvas of skin disgusted her until she gagged with revulsion at the monster she had become. But Astoria was so very weak and she could not fight the parasitic beast preying on her defenceless mind. This beast presented itself as her obsession with being beautiful, and by doing so, it appealed to her vulnerabilities and flaws. Her waning will power was no match against the demon she was battling. Astoria Greengrass, the angel whose wings could no longer support her, was defeated by her disease before she had even known of its manifestation.

**_be._**

She screamed and screamed until her voice shattered just like her fragile bones and her faltering heart. She wasn't resilient enough to conquer her nightmares or strong enough to outrun her demons. She was taught to be beautiful, obedient, and silent. No one noticed her, the ghost of the girl she had once been, and no one ever reached out to help her out of the abyss that was slowly but surely sucking her life out.

She came to the Room of Requirement and sought the Mirror more and more. Astoria knew that she was going to die - the binges and purges were beginning to become increasingly frequent and she was heaving blood instead of bile - but she needed the cold comfort of the glass window to that untouchable parallel universe. She had to pretend that everything would be fine and that she would be immortalised as this beautiful imitation of herself in the end.

**_exposed._**

"You can't win," the girl in the mirror said softly. "You know that, don't you?"

"So this is it, then?" Astoria whispered back, memorising the image of the girl she could have been. (The girl she _should_ have been.)

The girl faded away and Astoria was left looking at her true reflection in the Mirror's glass face. Immediately, she covered her eyes and cried, for she had seen Death whispering in her ear and numbering her days.

**_soon._**

Two days later, the Mirror of Erised showed Astoria Greengrass's desire to be the prettiest girl one final time. She stared into the enchanted glass during her last moments and found the beauty in life a little too late. Her decaying body had finally crumbled apart and her heart was ripped at the seams, but with her final exhalation she lifted her soul free from the claws of her stone demons and found solace in death.

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End file.
